Category: Restaurants

On the Hunt for Spring Happy Hours

After the brutal artic & rain conditions in New Orleans and carnival season, the Wild Cocktailians finally managed to carve out a nice day for sipping some happy hour cocktails and noshing offers in the New Orleans Warehouse district.Our Mission: seek out and find the best places that provide the biggest bang for our buck!First stop: El Patio Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Garden. We pulled up to TV parking at 3p.m in front of the restaurant.We made a beeline for an outside table to take advantage of the wonderful weather.

El Patio outdoor dining

Outside dining provides more of a light food and drink options with different menus for indoor & outdoor. The spacious patio is popular w med students & instructors. Apparently electronic pop music noise draws a certain night time party crowd (really El Patio at 3 in the afternoon???). Barry volunteered to up their music game for trade outs.Not only would it earn El Patio some serious music cred the neighbors probably would stop filing noise complaints!!!!!!!!!!!!

Certain drinks and dishes are 50% off from 3-6:30pm. El Patio doesn’t have much of a website-go tofacebookfor the menu–but be aware that happy hour items listed on fb as may not be available.

El Patio chips, dips & drinks

For cocktails, I had a Sangriarita –a generous sized drink that is a riff on a Sangria & tequila-with just a little citrus. I was pleased it WASN’T citrus forward as those types of cocktails tend to anger up my esophagus! To paraphrase Amy Winehouse, I say no, no, no! Barry had ahouse margarita but switched to what I had for his second. Both cocktails were reasonably priced at $5 & $4.50.

We sampled both happy hour & regular priced tacos.

brisket taco happy hour 1/2 off price

Two items that stood out (neither happy hour dishes) were the boudin balls and the smoked mushroom tacos.

Smoked mushroom taco

The most intriguing ingredient in the boudin balls was a Guajillo pepper jam–that was actually crunchy. Stuff was amazing–El Patio should sell it in jars! I’m working on getting the recipe from them. What a brilliant hack on the mushrooms. They’re actually, smoked and then battered fried! I would love to have tried the octopus listed on their fb menu but didn’t see it. We will return and try their dinner menu options in the near future. Stay tuned for our next adventure in the Warehouse district!